Return to wgc Forum - Message Thread - FAQ

Username: Phibian
Date/Time: Mon, April 17, 2000 at 6:50 PM GMT
Browser: Microsoft Internet Explorer V5.01 using Windows NT
Score: 5
Subject: I agree, but I think you missed an issue

Message:
 

 
I agree with many of the issues raised in this email, but I don't think Friedrich adequately considers the issue of multiple domain name registration by companies and trademark holders. As I wrote in a previous post "Would new TLD's change anything?", one big issue is that there are fewer and fewer (English) words left to be registered.

Since there is a definite trend to "lock up" the word and similar sounding words by registering a large number of domain names and having them all point to the same site (or be inactive), it seems to me that adding new gTLDs will have little net effect, unless the number of words in the English language suddenly changes or unless there are restrictions imposed on the number of domain names a company can hold.

Friedrich writes:
"1. ICANN guarantees the integrity of trademarked names under the cctlds of the countries, to which the trademarks protection extends, following a first-come-first-serve system among the trademark-owners themselves in re-spect of the trademark-names being registered in one or many of the 42 classes available."

The problem I see with this is that many people don't have any clue about what trademark classes are. So if you were looking for "all-in-one" the sandwich, the average person isn't going to know that this is class 30.

I do agree that it would be a good idea to restrict individuals to existing TLDs. Problem is, ".com"(in particular), ".net" and ".org" have been totally abused.

I also think it would be confusing for users if some companies (such as Microsoft or Coca-cola) kept their existing .com's etc as well as going to the new trademark only gTLDs, while other big companies (perhaps those late-adopters) only had the new gTLD.

One thing I've noticed is that many users have difficulty with the concept that the TLD is also part of the address, much like a postal address.  I mentionned it before - but I'll say it again. Many users are now used to the www.something.com format - if you try changing the format to something different, people get confused. This is an especially big problem if you try to change the 'www' as opposed to the '.com'

This is not an unsurmountable problem - but will require additional public education.  However, unless the type of information found under each TLD is consistent, the education process is definitely impeded.  And the information under .com, for instance, is definitely not consistent... It's much easier to explain to someone that if they are looking for a company, they should go to .com, while if they are looking for a trademark, they should go to .reg etc than it is to explain that if they are looking for that company they should look under random gTLDs because the company could have registered their name anywhere.

I think I like the way Taiwan does it best actually (.com.tw), but even if the various online "communities" - individuals, corporations, sex sites, etc could be separated, it would help.

There is one other problem I see with Friedrich's proposed solutions: .tm currently belongs to a small country...
 


Message Thread:


Privacy Policy | Terms of Service | Cookies Policy